Vancouver Whitecaps achieve serenity now

A strange mood seemed to envelope BC Place during the Vancouver Whitecaps’ 3-1 victory over the Chicago Fire on Sunday.

The Supporter’s Groups were happily singing, the remainder of the 20,000 strong crowd were calmly watching the action and even coach Martin Rennie (usually a bundle of kinetic energy powerful enough to light up a small town) was resting against the dugout wall with only the occasional half-hearted shout at the assistant referee to raise him from his torpor.

What made this mood even stranger was that the play on the field wasn’t all that great, passes were going awry, crosses were being over hit and there was barely a shot to speak of during the first- forty-five minutes.

I was perplexed and at a loss to explain this rather odd phenomenon for the longest time, but then the answer hit me like a Steven Lenhart “challenge”; everybody in the stadium was confident that the Whitecaps would win!

Being unbeaten at home, a great run of results and two forwards who were in scintillating goal scoring form had combined to give such a sense of security to every man, woman and child that there was little room in their minds for doubt to creep in.

This must be how fans of the likes of Manchester United and Barcelona feel in games against mid-table opposition; achieving a kind of Zen like inner peace that can’t be disturbed even if their team aren’t playing to their full potential because they know, they actually know, that it will all come right in the end. And so it did for the Whitecaps, with a touch of Brazilian magic and an impact substitute.

But how different would that mood have been just a few short weeks ago if Vancouver had put in a similar first half performance?

Every missed pass would have been greeted with groans, every opposition attack been accompanied by an intake of worried breath and every decision that went against the team would have seen Martin Rennie approach the point of self-immolation (and I daren’t even consider the tweets that would be favourited and forwarded like so many harbingers of doom).

This calmness won’t last of course. The nature of MLS means that no team can sail serenely through an extended spell of games (let alone a season) without encountering some undercurrents of failure or misfortune but, for now, the Whitecaps and their fans are at one with each other and at one with the universe.

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